Information Technologies Newsletter and Tips

 March, 2007

My.Hollins News
 

A faculty tab has been added to My.Hollins.  It contains links to the most used academic sites and resources on the intranet.  Logins have also been provided to parents and to the board of trustees so that they can keep up with activities and events on campus.

New Helpdesk Software

IT is using a new Helpdesk software package called Altiris Helpdesk.  The new software lets the user enter their own trouble ticket (incident) using a browser and submit it to the helpdesk online.  To use the new software:

Login to the portal   (my.hollins.edu)
Click on Helpdesk in the QuickLinks channel on the My.Hollins tab.
Select Create a new incident.
Fill in the incident form items and click OK.

Currently you must be on campus to use this webpage.

Our helpdesk workers will then take submitted incidents and either call back with a solution or assign them to one of the IT staff to resolve. 

The helpdesk webpage also allows you to check on the progress of an incident at any time using the View my incidents link.

Here is an example of what you might see when you look at the progress of a submitted incident.

If you prefer, you can continue to call in problems to the helpdesk and have them create the incident (formerly called a trouble ticket) in the system or send an email to helpdesk@hollins.edu. 

Blackboard Site Design Tips

There are several different options for the navigation area of a Blackboard course site.  Each professor can change the color or shape of the buttons or chance to a solid panel for navigation

To change the existing look, open your course
Open the Control Panel
Select Settings (Under Course Options)
Select Course Design
Select Course Design again
If you are using buttons, you can change the button shape, button type or button style (color).

If you select text menu style,  you can choose the background and text color..

Once you have selected your design elements, click Submit at the bottom of the screen. Hit OK 3 times.

Text Clipping

This cool trick works for both Macs and PCs.

Suppose you are looking at a web page or some document and want to copy some of the text to a mail message or into another document. 

You could highlight the text, right click, choose copy, click in the document where you want to put it, right click and paste. 

or you can simply clip it:
highlight the text,
Click and while holding down the mouse button, drag it where you want to paste it. 
When you release the mouse button, it will automatically be pasted there.

Ex, Copying from a web page to a Word Document

Note the + sign in the box next to the cursor. This indicates that the highlighted text will be copied (not moved).  If there is no + sign, press Ctrl before releasing the mouse button so the text is copied and not moved.  This also works for graphics.

For this to work well, you need to place the source and destination in adjacent locations so you can easily drag and drop from one document to the other.

  Mac Feature - GarageBand

Apple did a workshop in January for professors from Hollins and other CICV schools in which they demonstrated how easy it is to create a podcast with free software that comes with the newer Macs.  The final result can be converted to a format that allows you to post the podcast on a webpage.

Apple offers a number of products in the iLife suite for working with movies, photos and creating podcasts.  Check out the following site for tutorials to get you started with Garage Band.

Computer Workshop Schedule

The following workshops will be offer in the next month.  Descriptions of the seminars are included on the schedule.

Word Intermediate
Using Styles in Word
Power Point
Blackboard Gradebook
Blackboard – Quizzes and Tests
Access – Basics
Access – Forms and Reports 
Windows XP- Tips and Tricks
Excel – Intermediate
Photoshop Elements - fun with photos
Adobe Acrobat Professional

Check the schedule for times and signup information.

 Putting Programs at your Fingertips

If you have programs that you use daily, there are several ways to make them more easily available.

1. Create a shortcut to the program on the desktop
2. Pin the program to the start menu
3. Add the program to the Quick Launch toolbar

1.   To create a shortcut on the desktop,
press Start on the taskbar; 
All Programs; 
Navigate till you see the program name;
Right click on it;
With the right mouse button held down, drag it to the desktop.
Let go of the mouse button;
Select Copy here
You now have an icon on the desktop for the program
This is helpful if your desktop isn't too cluttered.

2. To pin a program to the Start menu:
Press Start on the taskbar; 
All Programs; 
Navigate till you see the program name;
Right click on it;
Select Pin to Start menu
 

Here Word, Access, Excel, Paint, etc have all been pinned to the Start menu.
 
The fastest way to bring up the Start menu is to press the windows key.

3.  (My favorite)  To add the program to the Quick Launch toolbar, first make sure the toolbar is enabled.  The toolbar is immediately to the right of the start button. 


If you don't see it, right click on a blank area of the taskbar;
select Toolbars;
Click to check Quick Launch and enable it.

Once the Quick Launch toolbar is enabled:
Drag the icon for any program onto it. 
The program will now be available to start with one click.  You won't have search the desktop or bring up the start menu.

File Preview - Word, Powerpoint, Publisher, Graphics and Excel Ffiles   (PCs only)

When you are browsing to find a particular file, do you ever find several which have similar names and you're not sure which one you want? Do you open them and close them one by one till you find the correct one? If so this tip will help.

In the Open window of one of the Office products, click the ▼ beside Views . 
Choose Preview.

Now as you click on files from the list, you'll see a preview of their contents on the right without having to open and close each one.  When you locate the file you want, double-click it to open it.

You should be able to see previews for Word, Publisher, PowerPoint docs and graphics files.  To use with Excel files, you must first enable the Preview property for each individual file. (In the File menu, select Properties; Check Save preview picture on the Summary tab).

Using Word's Auto Correct to Save Time

How often do you type the words Hollins University into a word document?  Each user probably has several phrases that they type repeatedly in documents.  You can use AutoCorrect to have Word replace a user selected abbreviation with a longer phrase.  For example, anytime I type hu as a word, it is automatically replaced with Hollins University.

To set this up, open Word.
From the Tools menu, select AutoCorrect Options...
In the Replace box, enter the short text you want to use.
In the With box, enter the full text that should replace the short text. 
Click Add;  OK;


 

Now if I type Welcome to hu.,  Word replaces it with Welcome to Hollins University.

Also, if you have words you regularly mistype (for me one example is clcik instead of click), you can use Word to automatically fix this each time you do it.

Be careful when using this.  For example, you don't want to automatically change from to form, even if you frequently misspell form as from.   Word would then make inappropriate changes that you didn't want to occur.  The 2 other examples work because there is no word hu and no word clcik.

If there are topics you would like to see covered in this tip sheet/newsletter please email suggestions to :  ewitt@hollins.edu